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Integration at VSU
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In the spring of 1963, Drewnell Thomas and Robert Pierce Jr. walked across a stage to receive their high school diplomas from Valdosta’s all-Black Pinevale High School. Then they walked right into the history books.
Thomas and Pierce both graduated with honors from Pinevale, but another academic achievement managed to outshine that one: Thomas and Pierce were the first Black students to attend VSU, then Valdosta State College.
Pinevale High closed its doors for the final time in 1972, but the impact its two 1963 graduates had on the VSU community lives on today.
Though the U.S. Supreme Court decided in the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of education that “separate facilities” in public education are “inherently unequal,” much of the southern U.S. saw vestiges of a racist system remain in place into the next decade.  But then-University President Dr. J. Ralph Thaxton had other plans for VSU. ....

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